Quotes of the Day

“History is nothing but a record of near misses, of last-minute left turns." – Don’t Make Me Stop Now: Stories by Michael Parker, reviewed here

"The difference between a book that used to be 400 pages and is now 200 pages and a book that has always been 200 pages is that the other 200 pages are still there, only you can’t see them." – Elie Weisel (source)

"The biggest gap in any venture is that between a service that is free and one that costs a penny." – Josh Kopelman, Redeye VC

"I studied with some of this country’s foremost authorities on African-American literature, and a significant number of these people are white. I say this to suggest that if you fail to fully appreciate this material, it is a matter of your intellectual laziness, not your race. If you cannot grasp the significance of Frederick Douglass’s plight, for instance, you are not trying hard enough, and I will not accept that." – Emily Bernard, an African-American professor at the University of Vermont, to her white students, in her essay anthologized in The Best American Essays of 2006

"Every time I think I’m famous, I have only to go out into the world." – Virgil Thomson